Thread by @ACPGilbertson

My second #OzHA2018 session yesterday was Discovering History at Scale Through @TroveAustralia with Kath Bode @KatherineBode, Garrick Hitchcock, Mark Finnane and Helen Morgan @HelenSnapper, chaired by Hilary Berthon

There was a lot of love in the room for @TroveAustralia, from panellists and audience members alike.
Hitchcock: “Trove has revolutionised the research of Australian history”
#OzHA2018

“Any plans to erect a bronze statue of the person who came up with the idea of @TroveAustralia?” #OzHA2018

“I can’t do my research in England, in America... We can do new and revolutionary stuff in Australia because of @TroveAustralia” #OzHA2018

I wished I was wearing my I 💚 Trove badge! #OzHA2018

The panellists demonstrated the ways they’ve used @TroveAustralia in their research. Bode @KatherineBode studied 21,000+ novels, novellas and short stories published in Australian newspapers (the primary way people engaged with literature) between 1865 and 1914 #OzHA2018

At this scale Bode @KatherineBode was able to overturn previous assumptions about the literature. Australian authors were valued, Indigenous characters were often depicted, and e.g. The Bulletin contributed to an existing Australian tradition rather than inventing it #OzHA2018

One output of Bode’s research is To Be Continued...: The Australian Newspaper Fiction Database cdhrdatasys.anu.edu.au/tobecontinued/. Another will be a module for secondary schools (I’d love to know more, @KatherineBode?) #OzHA2018

Hitchcock suggested that @TroveAustralia has helped solve a 230-year-old mystery: the fate of the La Pérouse expedition after it left Botany Bay in 1788. It may have involved at least two shipwrecks and castaways! #OzHA2018

Morgan @HelenSnapper highlighted the importance of @TroveAustralia in giving access to (from Jennifer Sinor) the ‘detritus’ of the ‘historical curb’, that is, ‘the domestic, the broken, the consumable, the useful, the female, and the ordinary’ #OzHA2018

Morgan @HelenSnapper showed how the Australian Women’s Register womenaustralia.info integrates with @TroveAustralia to record the lives of Australian women #OzHA2018

Integration with @TroveAustralia is also a feature of Finnane’s work on the Prosecution Project prosecutionproject.griffith.edu.au about the history of criminal trials in Australia #OzHA2018

Finnane said that at the beginning of the Prosecution Project, he could not have imagined the new role of the citizen-scientist (and -historian!) movement. Many volunteers are now involved with project records #OzHA2018

Volunteers are also essential to the success of @TroveAustralia itself. By one estimate, during one month in 2017 volunteers contributed work equivalent to that of 97 full-time staff! Correcting newspaper text is, indeed, addictive... #OzHA2018